In a starting point to revive the Capitol Hill Community Council, resident Chris Paulus met with neighborhood councils across Seattle and contacted over 50 organizations, with the goal of understanding a community council’s work and importance. Since these year-long research efforts began, Paulus is building an effort for Capitol Hill residents to engage in restart efforts and overcome challenges that evaporated the council in 2021.

A revival of the Capitol Hill Community Council will meet for the first time in September.

“Community in and of itself is important,” Paulus told CHS. “This is signifying the importance of connection and community with each other. Sometimes these different types of neighbors getting together get focused around a single problem that needs to be addressed. This can be a good thing, but this causes long-term problems in what that issue is until resolved.”

Paulus said religious groups are more likely to be engaged in civic activities, so he reached out to every spiritual group he could find on Capitol Hill, amounting to over 25.

One thing that struck him during his research phase was that CHCC lobbied for the Rt 8 bus line to be created in the 90s.

“That caused a switch in my mind, removing the slow building of the community council to the ‘we need to build this as quickly as possible’ because myself and all of my neighbors are worse off everyday this sense of community doesn’t exist,” Paulus said.

CHCC formed as a grassroots group of volunteers and neighbors over the years, yet has always had issues with participation: the group came together again in 2008 after dissolving due to a lack of leadership. Former president from 2017-2019, Previous leaders said they left because the vision of “community first” was gone, and CHCC lacked both action and representation.

Paulus said there are always many things community councils can act upon, like concerns around school closures.

“I feel because there’s not a community-based group for this area, it become harder for neighbors to engage with each other in a collective way to help benefit those types of projects,” Paulus said. “When I talk to people in other communities…that community council makes sure that there’s neighborhood tents at the farmers market every week, so different groups have a chance to expose their message to the public. We don’t have that in Capitol Hill.”

As an opportunity to bring Capitol Hill neighbors together, Paulus will be hosting an in-person meeting on September 10th at the Capitol Hill Public Library. Paulus will be advertising the meeting on social media, while flyering every public space he can.

“This is the community’s community council. It is my hope with this meeting to present a launching point for us neighbors to come together and figure out the next pieces, and figure out the progression,” Paulus said.

Paulus said he would love to have a council that works together in earnest so that he can also work on a subcommittee for parents and youth that relate to pedestrian and cyclist safety, summer camps and youth programming.

“I can’t do that unless the community council exists and is up and running, so that needs to be done first,” Paulus said. “I would recommend the community take time to let this group settle and let people become aware of it. A lot of times, when people try to relaunch things or start things up…they try to move very quickly.”

When former Mayor Ed Murray removed the 13-council neighborhood system in 2016, groups have been in decline ever since. The purpose of severing community council ties to the city was to allow the councils to act as independent bodies, and to create new community engagement processes. By the time the COVID-19 pandemic rolled around, CHCC faded away.

While there are many large issues facing the neighborhood, like schools, pedestrian safety and gun violence, Paulus said if CHCC feels a need to represent an issue politically, then they will do so.

“The issues that I’m really interested in are the smaller, infrastructure pieces, and what I mean by that is the challenge of connecting with our neighbors. The challenge of knowing what it is going on down the street, or even across the street. Issues with helping people to understand safety and how we interact with each other,” Paulus said.

When neighbors don’t interact with one another, Paulus said it becomes harder for residents to engage inactivities or learn about emergency events. Overarchingly, Paulus wants to bring folks together to share their voices and opinions on how to make the neighborhood an increasingly thriving place.

“Just because it [CHCC] may fail in the future doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do the right thing now,” Paulus said. “Maybe I’m just naive on it, but my biggest concern is actually being much more successful for the first meeting than I originally intended, so that’s keeping me up at night.”

Paulus encourages people to engage with their neighbors, and if CHCC creates space that makes that easier to happen, he encourages folks to attend.

To learn more  visit capitolhillcommunitycouncil.com.

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